Tis the season for crafts

What do illustrators do when they're under deadline? Why, get crafty of course! This past weekend was the RISD holiday sale in Providence, RI. Its become a yearly tradition for several of us BRG to reserve a table (Grace and Meghan had one too) to sell books, prints, and whatever else we decide to carve out time to make.

This year I have been obsessed with sewing tiny little hand warmers (warmies) shaped like the characters in my books. They are filled with feed corn, so they can be zapped in the microwave to warm them up, then stuffed into pockets!

Its funny how sometimes doing something seemingly unrelated to illustration can get you fired up to work again. Sitting down with my sewing machine gets me in the mood to paint because I remember the simple, immediate satisfaction of making something you can hold in your hand. Painting is satisfying too, but in a long drawn-out way, and really only when you hold a printed book do you get that final sense of a project being finished.

So little distractions like this are necessary sometimes, to remember why I started painting in the first place.